Death of the Scharnhorst, John Winton
Death of the Scharnhorst, John Winton
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Death of the Scharnhorst

Author: John Winton

Narrator: Alex Wyndham

Unabridged: 8 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/16/2023


Synopsis

An epic account of how the Royal Navy tracked down, cornered, and sank one of the most fearsome German warships of the Second World War.

The Scharnhorst was a state of the art capital ship of Nazi Germany's navy. Launched in 1936 she had terrorized Allied shipping since the beginning of the war, famously destroying the aircraft destroyer HMS Glorious in June 1940. Since then she had made numerous sorties into the Atlantic to raid British merchant fleets and had evaded destruction in the Channel Dash of 1942 in order to interrupt convoys to the Soviet Union.

The danger posed by the Scharnhorst to the Arctic convoys was monumental. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, commander-in-chief of the Home Fleet, devised a plan to lure their enemy from its Norwegian base and pound it with shells from the battleship HMS Duke of York and supporting cruisers and destroyers.

John Winton's comprehensively researched book, drawing on British and German eyewitness accounts, uncovers how the threat of the Scharnhorst was eventually brought to an end at the Battle of the North Cape in the freezing conditions of the Barents Sea.

About John Winton

John Winton joined the Royal Navy in 1949 as a cadet and retired in 1963 as a Lieutenant-Commander. He is widely known as a novelist and historian of the sea. His books include the novels A Drowning War and Aircraft Carrier, and works of non-fiction such as Find, Fix and Strike: The Fleet Air Arm at War 1939-45, War in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, Air Power at Sea 1939-1945, The Death of the 'Scharnhorst', Ultra at Sea, and Ultra in the Pacific. He died in 2001.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Larka on July 17, 2023

Unfortunately, I dnf this book 10% in. This is not due to the book, but to me not managing to connect with it. The book is really technical, which is one of the pros! But not knowing much of ships and not being interested in knowing the specifics so in detail, it just wasn't for me. Another big upside......more

Goodreads review by F.Hagan on May 17, 2022

Royal Navy As an ex RN Seaman Gunner it was good to read such a concise report of the battle,we all knew about the Bismarck destruction but not so much of the Scharnhorst. To survive so many Torpedo hits showed how strongly she was built. We are all men of the sea,to be told no Officers survived seems......more

Goodreads review by D.M. on February 25, 2023

Naval carnage This is a very detailed account of the sinking of the Scharnhorst in December 1943. What struck me was the enormous loss of life. Had the German ship been handled better the result might have been different. Just about every detail is included and the book is very fair to the Germans. Luck......more

Goodreads review by Bob on June 07, 2022

I came across this on Amazon and decided to give this a try. That was a good decision, as John Winton has chronicled a fascinating tale of the German battleship Scharnhorst and its loss in the Battle of the North Cape on 26 December 1943. He weaves the story of the Scharnhorst and its task force com......more